Put soda back in schools

By Nathan Aaron Wingert
This past week, the major soda distributors have decided to drop non-diet soda sales to schools across the country. My reaction: How dare they? How dare they limit my right to drink what soda I want!
I understand that obesity is the biggest concern in the United States because I wrote an article for my high school newspaper about obesity, using JFK’s inaugural address as a parody. If you’re fat, you need to take responsibility for your actions. Exercise – and eat right. This is a perfect example of the 10 percent of the obese people ruining the right to drink whatever soda for 90 percent of the population.

We know that history repeats itself. America tried to appease Hitler during World War II, and look what happened. Total chaos. Now we’re once again appeasing the obese people, at the expense of the rest of the world. It’ll get to the point where the government will force us to buy only organic, healthy food in order to rid the world of obese people.
This is utter rubbish. You should be allowed to buy, eat and drink what you want. You have to be responsible for you’re actions, however.
Nathan Wingert is a student at Central York High School and a member of the Teen Takeover staff.

How does comparing something to Hitler, which is a vailed argument, take away from my argument? It doesn’t. It only enhances my argrument. Soon, we’ll have fat people running the gov’t.
What about the people who can’t bring their own lunch. And besides, the school says you can’t to that because it’s sponsered terrorism.

Sorry, Nathan. Once an institution becomes public and uses tax-payer money, everyone – from politicians to environmentalists, health specialists, farmers, educators, businesses – wants to have a say in it. That’s a big reason that private schools often spend less than half the money-per-student that a public school spends. Homeschoolers spend a fraction of the cost. And, what the public/tax-payers get for all that money is a lot of regulations. If you really want to look into how this works, check out the whole school lunch program policy. Why do you think you always get milk with your school lunch? I’m sure the orange growers would love for you to get orange juice, and the soda companies would want you to get soda. I’m with Matt. Take your lunch and be happy about your free education.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law :
“Godwin’s Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
There is a tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is made the thread in which the comment was posted is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.”
Attacking an idea by comparing it to Nazi Germany does about as much for your point as attacking, say, your grammar and spelling, would do for my counterpoint. That is, nothing. It is a bad argument. Wartime atrocities and ethnic cleansing are simly not something you can compare to the regulation of soft drinks in public school systems.

I, personally, think that this law is stupid also. In most schools, the vending machines arn’t even open until after school. There are so many after school activities, from envirothon club to drama productions (excluding sports), and I highly doubt that they would want to drink a diet soda or “healthy drink”. They are going to want to drink a coke.
And to those of you who say that we should bring our own soda to school, how are we suppose to go about doing that? We only have so much room in our backpacks and if we are seen with a soda during school hours it must be disposed of.

About this blog

Teen Takeover is news by teens for teens in York and Adams counties. Students in the program work with professional journalists at the York Daily Record to produce news with a digital focus for their local audience. Teens in the program learn interview techniques, AP Style and journalism ethics. They also learn the latest multimedia tools modern reporters use to share information on a variety of platforms, including mobile. Read their articles here. Also, follow @ydrteens on Twitter.